Christopher Cross - Christopher Cross

As a teenager Friday night often meant staying up late and watching "concerts" on TV. Before there was MTV and MuchMusic there was Burt Sugarman's The Midnight Special. Wolfman Jack would do something or other, but there would be "performances" by a lot of popular bands and musicians. Sure, they were likely lip synced, but what wasn't? You mean to tell me Dick Clark's American Bandstand was actually live?

There would be a lot of stuff I don't remember, some I actively disliked. Yeah, early Prince in a loin cloth put me off his music for years. Then one night there was Christopher Cross performing "Ride Like the Wind" and after the fog machine more or less covers the stage the band launches in, and there's no Michael McDonald. Were they actually singing? I'm enthralled by this giant guitar playing Baby Huey with a receding hairline. The song gets to the end guitar solo and for the first time you can actually really hear what he's doing. He's tearing it up and letting people know he's the real deal. Yeah, I don't think this was a lip synced recording.

It was at this moment I became more than a casual fan.

Midnight Special - Ride Like the Wind

When this dropped very late in 1979 (really, why not wait a week and release it in 1980?) it seemed to come out of nowhere. He was all over the radio, and his brand of soft rock with an edge would somehow be the catalyst for the term "Yacht Rock" which is more derogatory than complimentary. Sure, having Michael McDonald lend his dulcet tones to a couple of tracks was awesome as he was pretty hot as The Doobie Brothers were coming off a great year with 1978's Minute by Minute.

Producer Michael Omartian assembled a host of session players to flesh out the album: Larry Carlton, Jay Graydon and Eric Johnson on guitar, Lenny Castro added percussion, and Don Henley, J.D. Souther and Nicoletee Larson among others provided the "Ooohs and aaahs".

At a time when new wave and punk were the rage and desperately trying to put a stake through the heart of disco, it's kind of cool this album got made at all. In a way the album encapsulated the best of the 70s singer songwriter period and added a cherry on top. It wasn't quite the end of an era but it certainly tied it up all nice with ribbons and bows.

For me this wasn't the end of my ride with Christopher Cross. He never went away, the world shifted but he stayed where he was more or less. Not to say he didn't grow as a musician. My favourite release is still his late 1985 record Every Turn of the World, that had a harder edge, more guitars and remains one of those albums that should have jumped him back into the mainstream. It didn't. Too bad.

To a lot of people Christopher Cross (the album) was a greatest hits album on it's own. Kind like the Car's debut a few years earlier - sometimes everything just comes together. The album would capture five Grammy Awards and for decades people would think of Christopher Cross as a one album wonder. He'd be pestered every year by critics and the press when the Grammy nominations came out asking about his success and subsequent fall into oblivion. Yeah - real nice.

This really is a great album, but he had a lot more to say, sadly no one really wanted to hear it.

Garfield - Strange Streets

I'd seen this before in the bin, but kept flipping through the stacks. I'd see it a few more times, each time stopping to look at it a little more. There was something kind of cool about the cover where the stylized Celtic knot had the dotted yellow line - it was a strange street for sure. I pulled the record out of the jacket and I was struck by the centre image. There was the familiar Mercury label, the same one I'd seen a thousand times on BTOs Head On album. Well, I'd bought things based on odd associations before - like when I had to buy anything that Solid Rock Records released (this was generally a good thing) who knows maybe this was a hidden gem. There weren't any real scratches or rash, just a lot of dirt and dust - it seemed to clean up okay, but we'll see how it goes. The album opens with the title track, and this wasn't straight ahead pop, or rock. It was leaning to the progressive, but with a pop bent. Oddly enough the vocals reminded me of Mi

Hoodoo Gurus - Mars Needs Guitars!

The first time I got this album it was a gift from my old roommate Otto. For a goofy little nebbish he would occasionally surprise me with some left of field musical treasures. Although, I still think he was reaching a little when he brought home the new "Led Zeppelin" album by Kingdom Come and forced me to listen to "Get it On" over and over again. I'd not listened to Mars Needs Guitars in a long, long, long time. The first thing that I jumped out at me was how David Faulkner's vocals reminded me of his fellow countryman Peter Garrett from Midnight Oil. I think the reason this never occurred to me was at the time I didn't have any Midnight Oil until Diesel and Dust in 1987. I'm not saying it was all the time, but there were a couple of songs where it stood out. Not a bad thing, just a thing. Even at the time this felt slightly out of step with what was going on in 1985. It seemed like everyone was using drum machines and synthesizers and having t

Saturday Night Fever - The Original Movie Soundtrack

It was going to happen sooner or later. Nostalgia is a cruel Mistress...she can dull the sharpest edges and over time can even soften the hardest of opinions. I found this in the dollar bin, and frankly at a dollar I was worried about what this would cost me. Not only from a monetary perspective, but my time, and more important my credibility. Fourteen year old me was screaming "Don't you dare. DON'T DO IT! Put it down. Walk away!" Then there was grey bearded me holding it and looking at it, thinking, "How bad could it be? I actually kind of like "Staying Alive" and me buying this record won't bring disco back, and no one will have to know I bought this." I pulled the album out of the bin, and carefully took out the records. They'd seen better days, and there were a couple of decent scratches that would no doubt make their presence known later. The jacket was in decent condition, and both of the albums had the original sleeves. I dusted the

Old Enough to Forget

Search This Blog